


Failure

by Tanaqui



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-01
Updated: 2005-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/pseuds/Tanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As events reach a climax in the War of the Ring, the son of the Lord of Gondor returns to Minas Tirith, after great deeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure

Faramir walked towards the Tower Hall for another meeting with his father. He thought he had done something – or not done something, perhaps? – that would anger the Steward, yet he was unclear what it was.

The doors swung open noiselessly and he paced down the hall to where his father sat. For some reason he could not fathom, the torches that should have cast a clear light over his path were not lit. A few dim beams fell through the high windows and pierced the gloom. His father, crouched in his customary place upon his black seat, was wreathed in shifting shadows. Peering through the murk, Faramir could see little except that Denethor’s head was bowed and his hands gripped the Steward’s white rod in his lap.

“What news, Captain?” The Steward’s challenge came before Faramir reached him. His voice was harsher than usual and Faramir wondered at the change.

“My Lord?”

“What news from the battle?” The Steward’s tone grew impatient.

Faramir had some memories of a fight, but they were blurred. He recalled hard handstrokes until he could barely lift his blade, and screams that froze his heart, and numberless orcs, yet he did not know where the engagement had taken place or what had been the outcome. Was this the battle his father meant? Or was that some other skirmish, long years past. There had been so many; and all were different; and yet all were the same.

He slowed his steps, and then stopped altogether, still some paces from the dais, as he struggled to remember the details of the most recent clash. Yet he could not. Nothing more came to him. Why could he not remember?

Still the Steward waited for his Captain to report. At last Faramir said, “My Lord, I cannot tell you. I do not know what has happened.”

“Then I will tell you, Captain.” With the last word, his father mocked his ignorance. “Cair Andros has fallen and the River is lost. The Rammas is breached and the Causeway Forts are taken. The Pelennor is overrun. And now the City burns.”

Faramir stood still in shock. All the defences gone, the enemy at the walls: had all the hosts of Mordor come against them at last? And had he failed so miserably to stem the tide of foes?

His father raised his head then.

Only an effort of will, allied to quick reflexes, allowed Faramir to restrain himself from recoiling and crying out with horror as he saw that his father’s face was scarred and seared.

On one side, peeling charred flakes fell from whitened flesh and exposed bone. On the other, Faramir saw the damage was not so deep: merely – merely! – red and puckered skin, with clear fluid weeping from open blisters.

“I burn,” his father said, and now Faramir heard the rasp of a smoke-damaged throat. “Your disloyalty has set a fire in my flesh and the house of my spirit crumbles. The West has failed.”

 _Failed_. The word seemed to resound round the hall like a gong, reverberating as if the stone was not merely echoing it but accusing him also. As it repeated in his head, Faramir tried to muster his thoughts. Was all truly lost? Was there nothing to be done? Did his father have no request to make of him that might make their end, if end there was to be, a little more worthy of proud Númenor?

He dropped to his knees in supplication. “Father, command me! What would you have me still do?”

“Command you? Have I not always tried to command you? And have you not ever pursued your own course, your own counsel: always you wished your actions to appear lordly, generous, gracious, gentle, no matter what was needed. And in hours such as these, you are rewarded indeed. With my death and the death of all your people!”

“My Lord, I have always tried to do your will,” Faramir pleaded. The reproach of that withered flesh bore down on his spirit.

“Nay, you were always the wizard’s pupil. He used his tricks and his magics long ago to steal your heart. You fool! If you had brought me that mighty gift, we would not burn.” Denethor paused, and then said coldly, “Your brother would have brought it to me. He was no wizard’s pupil. He was mine.”

“I am yours, father,” Faramir whispered. “I beg you, tell me what I should do.”

“Have you not done enough already?” At that, Denethor lifted his hands. Flakes of burnt skin scattered and hung for a moment in the air as he parted his clenched fists. He held out the two halves of the broken white rod of the Stewards. “You did this,” he told his younger son. “The line is broken. Boromir is dead and the City is falling into ruin. The line of Stewards is ended.” He flung the pieces of the rod away from him and they clattered across the floor. “You did this.”

As the pieces came to rest, Denethor stood up and took a pace towards Faramir, and his hoarse, cracked voice rose to a scream. “We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn!”

“My Lord!” In the face of such an injunction, Faramir could find no answer other than to scramble to his feet and flee the hall.

Outside, in the court of the White Tree, he stopped to gasp for breath, and sucked in the foul taints of Mordor. He had breathed them sometimes in Ithilien but never before here in the White City. The sky was dark, yet there was a red glow over all things. The City burned. He stood irresolute, wondering where he should go and what he should do: how he might still best serve the people he had failed.

Then he saw a woman sitting on the edge of the fountain next to the withered tree. She wore a blue cloak starred with flowers along the edges. Her dark head was bent so that her features were hidden, but she was singing a lullaby he recognised.

“Mother!” he cried, in disbelief and joy. She turned then, showing him the fair face he remembered only dimly, and stood up and held her arms out to him. He came to her.

“Goodness, how you’ve grown!” she said. She took his face between her hands and kissed his brow, before she stepped back and caught his fingers in hers.

Her skin was cold and his cheeks felt damp where she had touched him. He turned her palms upwards and looked at them. They were sticky with some dark liquid. Glancing down, he saw that her cloak was stained as well.

He had seen enough of it shed to know: _blood_.

“Mother,” he pressed her hands to his chest, “are you hurt? Have you cut yourself?”

She swayed a little and he caught her before she fell. He set her back down on the rim of the fountain. The cloak swung open. Underneath, she wore a shift that had once been white but was now mottled with crimson marks.

He looked up at her where he knelt before her. “Mother, what is this? What has happened to you?”

Again, she laid her hand on his cheek. “I bore my jewel,” she said quietly, “and it burned me like the jewels of Fëanor. I shall never be free of the pain of it.”

He looked at her uncomprehending.

“Like Beren, I should have been content with a single triumph,” she said. “Your brother was enough. You were too much. I hope you are a fine man and a credit to your father, my son, for you stole me from him.”

Understanding came to him then. “No, mother,” he whispered. “How could that be the way of it? I was not a babe when you died.”

“No. You did not kill me quickly, ‘tis true. Yet I never ceased to give my blood for you. It would have been better for me if I had not borne you.”

Faramir remembered his father in the days and months after his mother’s death. He had always been stern – as a ruler of Men in hard times must be – but he had become even colder, ever more bitter. The little time he had spent with his sons had dwindled. No wonder: how could he bear to look upon the child who had robbed him of his beloved wife?

“Oh Mother,” Faramir cried. “I wish I had never been born if you might have lived.”

“I wish it too, my son,” she said. “So does your father.”

Part of Faramir longed to stay with his mother: the selfish part that craved life and her love and her comfort; the part of him that had robbed them all of her.

The rest of him could not bear to stay.

He rose and bowed to the fair lady whose life he had stolen. “Forgive me, mother,” he said, backing away from her.

He went on out of the citadel then, through the circles of the City: burning, burning, all was burning. Without knowing how he came there, he found himself by the banks of the Anduin. He knelt and began to wash the blood from his hands, blankly and methodically.

A shadow on the water in front of him made him look up. A boat was gliding by, its design strange to Gondor, yet Faramir knew it. Once more he waded out to see, in the soft light that suffused the boat, his brother’s peaceful face lapped in water

Boromir’s eyes opened. “Dreaming again, little brother?” he said. “Who are you cursing with your dreams this time?”

The strange red half-light that permeated the sky shifted, and Faramir saw that his brother’s corpse was rotting, the flesh falling from his cheeks, the eyes blank. The soft glow that lit the boat had shifted into a cold pale werelight, like the lights he had once seen in a trip to the very north of Ithilien and the borders of the Dead Marshes. Faramir felt a wash of loathing that his brother’s body should be so ill-used: no long slow sleep of death embalmed for Boromir.

He forced his mind back to his brother’s question. “All of Gondor, it seems.” He tried to answer casually, but a sob caught in his throat.

“Father said that?” When Faramir nodded, Boromir sighed and said, “Well, I suppose he has every right to be angry with you this time. Although, perhaps if you cringed a little less before him, he would not be so wroth. I do not know why you do not speak your mind, as I did. Yet,” Boromir’s voice became low and reflective, “if you have lost all of Gondor, it seems it were better you keep your counsel to yourself. I wish I could have spoken to you of tactics. Alas, that I was not there!”

“And that is my fault, also,” Faramir whispered. “I should have gone, not you. I should have fallen at Rauros. It was my dream. Then you would have been here to save Gondor.”

“Aye, I would not have let her fall, would I, little brother? Gondor has no place for dreamers and scholars.”

The boat was almost past Faramir now. He tried to wade downstream, but could not seem to keep pace with the current.

“Boromir, what must I do?” he called after him, but there was no reply. His helper and protector was gone.

He took another step out into the stream and found the riverbed falling away beneath him. He sucked in a mouthful of water instead of air as the current dragged him down. His arms flailed wildly as he fought for the surface. “So the river will take us both,” he thought, even as he fought its pull.

Then air was bursting into his lungs and he felt the hard tug of a hand twisted into his tunic to pull him from the flow. Half on the bank, half still in the shallows, he coughed and spluttered the last of the river water from his lungs. After some moments, a little recovered, he looked up to see Mablung sitting on the bank above him, nearly as wet as he was.

“Mablung!” he gasped. “My thanks! How many times have you saved me now?”

“A few, Captain,” Mablung said, unsmiling, “but I guess this will be the last.”

“The last?” Faramir echoed, frowning. He was distracted by trying to puzzle out what was strange about Mablung’s hand where it rested on the grass near to him. After a few moments, he realised Mablung seemed to have strapped his bracer on the wrong wrist. He wondered at the reason, but it did not seem important.

He turned his attention back to Mablung as the ranger answered his question. “You remember that scratch you sent me back to the City to have seen to?” Mablung laughed bitterly and swung round to show Faramir how his other arm hung limply at his side, the hand swollen and blackened. “That sword thrust I took for you: the blade must have been poisoned. I just hope you manage to do something right for once and hold off those murdering devils until after I’m dead. I wouldn’t wish them to do to me what they did to those other poor lads they slaughtered at the forts or on the Pelennor. Nasty that was.”

Faramir tried to think how many years he and Mablung had served to together, but it was another thing he could not seem to remember. He knew they had joined the Rangers within months of each other, and that Mablung had been a friend, in so far as any ordinary Ranger could be friends with the son of the Steward. It was too many years and too much companionship for Mablung to have died this way.

“I’m sorry, old friend,” Faramir murmured. “You should not have put yourself in harm’s way for my sake.”

“Aye, well, we always had to put ourselves in harm’s way for you, didn’t we?” Mablung shrugged dismissively. “None of us wanted to face the Steward if we brought you back across the river dead. Not that it was easy to stop you getting yourself killed.” He gave a derisive laugh. “You used to lead those charges like you thought you were Tulkas or Oromë or some such, like those orc arrows were just going to skip harmlessly away. You were a menace, and no mistake.”

Faramir dragged himself out of the river at that. He sat up and looked at Mablung in disbelief. He had never heard such things from his friend before.

“Mind you, if it had just been yourself you’d led into trouble, that would have been bad enough,” Mablung went on, gazing out over the river, “but no, you always had to have the last word on the tactics, didn’t you? Even when you were contradicting men with twice your experience. ‘Twas a wonder you didn’t get us all killed a dozen times over. But it never mattered whether you were a great general or a useless dolt, did it? You were the Steward’s son: of course he was going to make you Captain. It was our job not to let you foul your command up completely.”

Mablung turned and gave Faramir a hard look. “Guess you finally managed it. I hear Cair Andros went and then they overran the Pelennor and now they’re in the City itself. A fine job you did, eh, Captain?”

Faramir was remembering now. That ambush where the number of foes had been more than the scouts had told: he had spread his men too thinly on the flanks and the orcs had got behind them. He had lost a tithe of his men before he had been able to regroup, repulse the attack and win the day. Had it been that day or another that he and Hathaldir had got too far ahead of the rest and been cut off? They had fought back to back for what seemed like an eternity, until Damrod led a sortie to rescue them Yet not before Hathaldir had taken a blow that should have broken Faramir’s neck. And was he not always, in those long debates over tactics, the one to make the final decision when there had been some doubt over their course? Decisions that had sometimes led to ill ends.

He had tried. He had tried to be a good fighter and a good leader and a good captain. But Mablung was right. He was Captain because he was the Steward’s son and not because he was the best man for the job. And now all Gondor was paying for his failure.

He stood up and looked down at the ranger. “I am sorry, Mablung,” was all he could say, before he turned away into the woods.

He walked on for a while. Green leaves shaded him pleasantly from a bright summer sun shining out of a sky like a high blue dome. Near by, a stream burbled over a rocky outcrop and splashed coldly into a small pool a few feet below. All around him was the scent of sweet herbs and the humming of bees. The loveliness of Ithilien mocked his dark mood.

Looking about him, Faramir caught a glimpse of the bend of Anduin and guessed he was somewhere in Emyn Arnen. It was a beautiful spot, but he had never had much chance to linger in these glades as he hastened between the White City and the southern refuges.

He was listening to the music of the stream when a new sound intruded: the high piping of a child’s voice. At first, he could not make out any words. Then the boy came into view: running between the trees, apparently playing some sort of game in which he had to touch them as he zigzagged from one to another. He was almost upon Faramir before he saw him and stopped sharply.

He gave Faramir a broad smile. “The faithful stars have all gone out,” he said in a sing-song voice. Then he laughed and darted back into the woods.

Faramir made to start after him but the boy had vanished. Then it was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. He looked around in horror as the vision of Ithilien in its summer finery slid away. Before him now were the same trees, but they were twisted and blackened with fire, their leaves burned to skeletons. Under his feet, the grass was scorched; the stink of charred herbs hung in his nostrils. He turned and saw the rivulet was running brown with dirt: the pool was clogged with debris, and foul insects whirred across its stagnant surface.

Above him the sky was dark and featureless.

He barely had time to register the devastation before he was in a different wood: one he also knew well, although he had never been there waking, nor could he ever tread its drowned paths. He looked up and saw the familiar higher slopes of the lone peak rising above him. Below him, the ground began to tremble.

This time he welcomed it.

Despite that, he did as he always did and climbed on up the path to come out onto the open and unroofed hallow on the summit. Far behind him, he thought he heard someone calling his name, but he ignored it. The silence on the peak was so profound that a stranger transported there would not have spoken. Only the Kings would break that hush – and now there were no Kings.

He walked to the edge of the high place and stood looking outwards, facing the West.

The great dark wave climbed over the green lands and above the hills, coming on, Darkness Unescapable. As it raced towards him, he saw that this time it was not made up of black, foaming water with white crests. Instead it was a wave of ash and cinder, flickering with glowing embers. He flung out his arms wide to embrace it, to be consumed by it.

“Faramir!”

The voice that spoke from behind him was quiet but commanding. The wave halted, hung before him. Faramir did not know if it was the voice behind him or his own will that held it reared in place. Startled, broken from his acceptance, he turned.

He recoiled, taking a step back towards the edge of the platform. “No,” he whispered.

“Faramir?” This time the voice held a note of concern rather than command.

Faramir wondered to see his father here, whole and unburnt, and unbowed by the cares of state. He looked as Faramir dimly remembered him as a child: the proud face held high, his dark hair flecked with only a little grey.

He looked as his father should have looked if he had not had a faithless son.

Faramir sank to his knees and bent his head. “I failed you,” he whispered. “I failed you all. You. Mother. Boromir. The Rangers. Gondor. Reward that which was given. Oathbreaking with….” He could not bring himself to say the word.

“You did not fail, Faramir.” Now the voice was filled with pity. “Gondor stands. The army before its gates was defeated. Help came in time because you held the outer defences.”

“The line of Stewards is ended,” Faramir said softly. “The line of Kings is ended. Mean folk shall rule the last remnant of the Kings of Men.”

“Nay, Faramir, that will not be our fate. Look at me!”

Faramir raised his eyes to the man who stood before him.

“Faramir, I am not your father. Though,” he gave a wry grin, “it has been said before that Denethor and I are as alike as nearest kin. Nay, I am Isildur’s Heir: Aragorn, son of Arathorn, _Envinyatar_. In me, the line of Kings remains unbroken. Gondor still stands. And, though the days are yet dark, I would have Faramir of the House of Húrin at my side as my Steward.” He held out his hand to Faramir. “Come, Faramir. There is much work to do.”

Faramir saw now that this man was not his father: a difference in the set of his jaw and the slope of his brow. But how could this be the heir of Isildur? Had not the Northern Line perished also in the time of King Eärnur? Yet this man spoke with the true air of Númenor, and none of that race would claim those titles without just cause.

 _Until the king should come again:_ the words might have become mere rote to most in Gondor, but Faramir had longed to see the crown restored: an end to war, the White Tree in flower again, and Ithilien and all the West free from Sauron’s evil.

Yet how could the king, if this man was the king, wish to have him at his side?

“Nay, I am a faithless servant,” he whispered. He dropped his head again. “Even if there were a king again, why should he wish for one such as I to serve him?

“If we live through these dark days – and I will not lie to you and say they are not dark – and there is a king again, he – or any lord – would count it an honour to have Faramir of Gondor serve him,” Aragorn answered.

Faramir sensed Aragorn squat down in front of him, and then found his head being lifted. He steeled himself to look unwaveringly into that clear gaze. The eyes were very like his father’s and he felt as if they were seeing through him into the depths of his soul, yet there was no scorn in them. He read pity, and a deeply felt love and concern for all who suffered in Middle-earth. He did not realise how much what he saw now matched the look that other men had often seen in his own eyes.

“Faramir, did you not resist the Ring and send the Ringbearer on his way and keep for us all what little hope we have?” Aragorn said, a gentle rebuke in his voice that Faramir could have forgotten such a thing. “I can ask for no better servant than one who was of the same mind as I was even ere I met him. One who showed such wisdom and strength in dealing with all our futures. And one who treated my friends with such kindness and courtesy.”

“The lord I served then was not of that mind,” Faramir said bitterly. “My father thought me a fool.”

“Your father thought only of Gondor, of his own narrow concerns. I do not want such as my steward. I want one who cares for all, whether they be my subjects or no. And not only in Ithilien did you show you were worthy to serve _Envinyatar_. If you had not fought bravely upon the outwalls and denied the enemy for many hours, Rohan would have come too late. And still you brought back near two thirds of your troops, even through such a long retreat from so far afield. What king would not want courage and hardihood such as this to serve him?”

“Yet I could not save them all. Boromir and Mablung told me as much.”

“Boromir and Mablung could not have saved them all. No man could have done more when pitted against all the might of Mordor. You triumphed, Faramir, and the City wept for you, and honoured your return and your deeds.”

“My mother told me I should never have been born.”

Faramir saw that the other looked truly startled at that. “Your mother?”

“Aye. I spoke with her not more than–” Faramir paused. How much time had passed since then? An hour? A day? At last he settled on the one thing he could be sure of. “I spoke to her before I came here,” he said. “She told me I killed her, that I robbed my father of their happiness.”

Aragorn took him by the shoulders. “Faramir, even if that were true, how could you be to blame? You were a babe. You did not ask to be born. And you have grown to be a man of whom any mother would be proud. Have I not told you that you have shown as much these past days?”

He gave Faramir a little shake. “Think, Faramir, think! Use that mind of yours, for which you are justly famed. Look at where we are. Can aught of this be true? Consider who speaks to you. Your mother, may she be at peace, has been dead for thirty years. Can you not see these are phantoms of the Dark Lord, sent to torment you?”

“Like the werelight….” Faramir said slowly, remembering his brother and the boat. Had he not had been filled with loathing, rather than pity and grief, while he had spoken to Boromir.

“Faramir, let your darkness pass,” Aragorn’s voice did not command, as his father would have done, but entreat. “Come back and serve your king.”

Faramir closed his eyes for a long moment.

When he opened them again, he found he was lying on soft pillows. Leaning over him was one he knew.

“My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?”

**Author's Note:**

> While most of the people Faramir “talks” to are dead or dying, Mablung is not: he later leads the counter-ambush as the Armies of the West march to the Black Gate. I was drawing on Éowyn’s comment when she wakes up in the Houses of Healing: “Éomer! What joy is this? For they said that you were slain. Nay, but that was only the dark voices in my dream.” Of course, pretty much everything Faramir hears in his dream, until he meets Aragorn, is a perversion of the truth.
> 
> The small boy is meant to be a prophetic vision of Faramir’s son Elboron, whose name means “faithful star” (Elboron is mentioned in HoMe 12).


End file.
